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Thursday, 27 June 2013

To build a truly impressive stamp collection, you need a number of things: an array of contacts in the world of philately, a passion for the craft and also a fair bit of disposable income to spend chasing down these precious prints.

Friday, 31 May 2013

It’s a sad fact of life that, for many, the art of writing and sending letters is dying out. More often than not, the majority of the items coming through the letter box are merely bills, flyers and junk mail. These days, a handwritten letter is very rare. Although there is the temptation to discard envelopes and stamps without a thought, you could be losing out on a world of possibilities. Here’s why you should be more careful:

Stamp collecting pays

Regardless of whether the stamps have been marked or not, there is always a use for old stamps. For instance, did you know that they can be donated to charity? The typical price a charity can expect to receive for used stamps is roughly £4.50 for a kilogram of British stamps or up to £15 for foreign postal markers. If all of the UK’s stamps were recycled like this charities could raise thousands of pounds every year.

Love your philately? We do too. Which is why we’ve put together this quick chronology of stamp printing methods from British history.

May 1840 – 1855 (Line engraved stamps)

Printed using a technique also known as the gravure or recess printing method, line engraved stamps were the very first printed stamps to be used for postage in Great Britain. Over 480 printing plates, most of which included 240 unique stamp pictures with their own ‘check letters’ in the corners (to protect against forgeries), were used to produce billions of line engraved stamps.

These stamps were made using an engraving etched onto a piece of steel. This was then solidified and punched into a printing plate. Line engraved stamps were thought of as less easy to counterfeit as fine-details created using raised lines were impossible to mimic for all but the most highly skilled and experienced engravers.